COMMENTARY: Alabama’s coast needs rehabilitation help

By Pat Byington

Friday

Jul 30, 2010 at 12:01 AM

“How do we make people in Kansas care about the lasting effects from the Gulf oil spill a year, three years, a decade, maybe even longer from now?”Casi Callaway, the director of Mobile Baykeeper, posed this very question in a recent interview. She knows, all too well, that once the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill is plugged, the national media will pack up their bags, leave for New York City, and in the future dutifully file quarterly, perhaps semi-annual stories on the Great Gulf Oil Spill of 2010. In her words, she is fearful that the world is going to forget, and frightened how that will impact the future of her two-year-old son, family, home and community.My older sister, who has been a nurse for more than 30 years, best described to me what is happening to the Gulf. A terrible traumatic event has happened, like a car accident. When you are brought to the hospital, you stop the bleeding. Once that is done, you start to heal. And then the hard part occurs — rehabilitation.“Therapies” are prescribed. And that, my sister said, can be the loneliest journey. It could be ours in the Gulf if we allow it.According to Bill Finch, former head of conservation for the Nature Conservancy and now senior fellow at the Ocean Foundation, rehabilitation will require a sustained generational effort. We are in the midst of a “severe ecological rearrangement,” Finch has called it.Oil sheens have invaded Grand Bay, Alabama’s model estuary. On Petit Bois Island, an area west of Dauphin Island, 60 tons of oil pebbles and patties have been picked up. The beaches look like a Dalmatian.In some places the effects may not be obvious for a year or two. Because of the toxicity and the oxygen deprivation caused by the spill in the waters, whole generations of fish, crabs and shrimp will be impacted this year, next year and beyond. Life in the Gulf as we know it, our estuaries, the beaches and wildlife will change, in some cases disappear altogether. Whole links in the food chain are broken.We need to start developing therapies today to rehabilitate our Gulf back to health.One such therapy has been developed by the Nature Conservancy and endorsed by the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, Mobile Baykeeper, Alabama Coastal Foundation and the Alabama Department of Conservation, which calls for the construction in three to five years of 100 miles of oyster reefs and 1,000 acres of marsh and sea grasses in Mobile Bay. The new reefs will help rehabilitate and nurse back to health our local fisheries.During the past century, we have lost 90 percent of our marshes, sea grasses and oyster reefs in Mobile Bay. The oil spill threatens the remaining fragile habitat we need to have for a viable seafood industry. This therapy will repel the effects of the oil spill and start the natural and ecological rehabilitation process.Another therapy we need to prescribe is political. We need to follow Fairhope City Councilwoman Debbie Quinn’s call to create a permanent nonpartisan task force in Alabama to address the short- and long-term needs, solutions and advertisement therapies on behalf of the community and region.And along with the task force, we must insist that every candidate for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general pledge to work immediately on the oil spill once elected in November. Alabama and our Gulf Coast neighbors need an advocate. A friend.Rehabilitation can be a lonely journey. We must be able to convince the people of Kansas and our entire nation that we need their help and they need us. Not for 100 days, but sadly for many years to come. Since the oil spill occurred, Casi Callaway’s Mobile Baykeeper organization has received more than 6,000 requests from people all over the country who want to volunteer.Rehabilitation of our Gulf begins today and must have friends, volunteers and advocates willing to work for as long as it takes. That includes our elected officials, the people of Kansas and you.

Pat Byington, a longtime Alabama environmental advocate, has served on the boards of the Alabama Environmental Management Commission and the Forever Wild program.

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